'Newsrooms Will Shut Down': Media Groups Tell Supreme Court Privacy Law Amounts to Pre-Censorship

India's privacy law, which would require journalists to seek consent from people they write about, amounts to pre-censorship and could shut down newsrooms, media groups told the Supreme Court on Tuesday as the most high-profile challenge to the law opened, Reuters reported. The court posted the case for next month.

Awaaz Punjab Investigations Desk27 October 20263 min readRead in all 3 languages

The Indian government's privacy law, which would require journalists to seek consent from people they write about, amounted to pre-censorship and could lead to newsrooms shutting down, media groups told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, starting the most high-profile challenge against the legislation, Reuters reported.

Source: Reuters via SRN News

"It is changing the whole concept of what is news," Madhavi Goradia Divan, the lawyer for the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), told the judges, according to Reuters. "Newsrooms will shut down, if we have to ask for permission... it's then a complete regime of pre-censorship." LiveLaw's live reporting from the Supreme Court on Tuesday also carried the publishers' argument that news cannot wait for permission and consent.

Source: LiveLaw

A group of 21 news publishers, including companies owned by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, has challenged the privacy law, arguing it would trample upon investigative work and allow New Delhi to identify journalists' sources, Reuters reported on Monday. The DNPA petition, filed on October 6, seeks to strike down provisions due to take effect in May 2027, Inc42 reported.

Source: Inc42

Media companies received assurances in an August meeting with the government that the law would protect press freedom, but not having a written carve-out for journalists like in the European Union, Singapore and Britain was alarming, the news publishers said in their filing, according to Reuters. The Supreme Court posted the case for next month.

Sources